donbosco
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In North Carolina racing used to be like hunting, fishing, going to church, or choosing Carolina or State. If you didn’t do it you still knew all about it and who did. Cale Yarborough, Bobby Allison, the Petty guy from Randolph County - were favorites as I recall. There were boys that would scribble the car numbers of their favorite racers on their school notebooks and could recite engine specs from heart. I freely admit that the sport never reeled me in much. I could listen with some understanding and I did glance at the racing stories in the ‘Greensboro Daily News.’ I didn’t go to races and I feel like there was a kind of mild disapproval of the wastefulness of it all from my Deddy though he never said so. He minded his own business that way.
A lot of racing went down on the backroads of #DeepChatham and there was a great deal of fashion to it. Mag wheels and white letter tires, slicks, and spic’n span interiors were the order of the day. Burn-outs and doughnuts happened all over. Dudeing up your car was important. Trans-Ams, Mustang Shelbys, and 1967 Chevy Impalas turned high school parking lots into showrooms. In the days before the ubiquitous 24-hour ‘Pantry’ the crossroads gas station-mechanic-general store ruled the countryside. Closed down at ten, by midnight the dimly-lit area around it became a magnet for fancy cars, hood-sitting, and tale-telling. Those hang-out spots in the backcountry were nigh onto gang headquarters and to even pass by a particular outpost after a certain hour wasn’t done without some consideration first. Things went on at those spots. Cars sometimes raced. Motors revved and engines purred. Paper bags and styrofoam cups poorly hid the beer being downed.
The global backdrop for all of this was the “Gas Crisis” of 1973. Led by Saudi Arabia, the Arab OPEC countries called an embargo on nations that they rated as supporting Israel in the “Yom Kippur War” (October 1973). The USA was most prominent in that group. Oil prices therefore rose, with gasoline going from around .35 cents to .65 cents over the next 12 months. At times gas was even rationed and miles per gallon (MPG) immediately became a topic of conversation. Massive, LOUD engines were cast in a new light - at least for some. I suspect that the disapproval of car fashion and racing culture I sensed from the more traditionally frugal (my parents were painfully so - they were Great Depression kids after all) was fully exacerbated by this real crisis (which, as we now know, was just the first shot of many across the bow in our dependence on fossil fuel).
Locally, the flip side of the Gas Crisis was the building of ‘New 421’ through the heart of Chatham. That highway construction project, itself designed to bring relief from the often winding shoulderless two-lane ‘Old 421’ that ran from #Goldston through #BearCreek and #Bonlee to #SilerCity and on to #Greensboro, briefly resulted in some very fine straight-ahead, ‘officially’ unoccupied dragways before its opening to traffic in the late ‘70s. Plenty of young, local racers bit the bullet of shortages and rising prices to ‘Go Fast’ during those times. We lost some young people on those curvy old roads and plenty more survived close call crashes. I wrecked a car, my brother did too. Maybe ‘New 421’ saved a life or two. Just the same as I think back it seems a miracle that more didn’t die. The “Hey Y’all! Watch This!” worldview was strong in those times. I wonder how powerful that memory rings today?
I don’t know if racing is still a thing among the boys of #DeepChatham - I’m pretty sure that hunting, fishing, church, and choosing Carolina or State (sadly now-a-days dook is a legitimate choice as well despite the fact that few actual North Carolinians and even fewer #Chathamites attend or have EVER attended that institution since their mid-20th century turn toward enrolling primarily out-of-state) are still important to folks. Perhaps the country crossroads gas station parking lot gang gathering has gone the way of disco and dinosaurs? NASCAR itself has receded from the halcyon days of Petty and Earnhardt - is there even a race still held in North Carolina? And this leads to our #OnThisDay…
#OTD (September 18) in 1947 NASCAR founder Bill France and partners incorporated Hillsboro Speedway. The 1-mile oval seating 25K was known as The Occoneechee Speedway until ‘68. The 10-mile NASCAR opener on June 1, 1948 brought in 20K fans. Occonneechee Speedway, NASCAR in Orange County
A lot of racing went down on the backroads of #DeepChatham and there was a great deal of fashion to it. Mag wheels and white letter tires, slicks, and spic’n span interiors were the order of the day. Burn-outs and doughnuts happened all over. Dudeing up your car was important. Trans-Ams, Mustang Shelbys, and 1967 Chevy Impalas turned high school parking lots into showrooms. In the days before the ubiquitous 24-hour ‘Pantry’ the crossroads gas station-mechanic-general store ruled the countryside. Closed down at ten, by midnight the dimly-lit area around it became a magnet for fancy cars, hood-sitting, and tale-telling. Those hang-out spots in the backcountry were nigh onto gang headquarters and to even pass by a particular outpost after a certain hour wasn’t done without some consideration first. Things went on at those spots. Cars sometimes raced. Motors revved and engines purred. Paper bags and styrofoam cups poorly hid the beer being downed.
The global backdrop for all of this was the “Gas Crisis” of 1973. Led by Saudi Arabia, the Arab OPEC countries called an embargo on nations that they rated as supporting Israel in the “Yom Kippur War” (October 1973). The USA was most prominent in that group. Oil prices therefore rose, with gasoline going from around .35 cents to .65 cents over the next 12 months. At times gas was even rationed and miles per gallon (MPG) immediately became a topic of conversation. Massive, LOUD engines were cast in a new light - at least for some. I suspect that the disapproval of car fashion and racing culture I sensed from the more traditionally frugal (my parents were painfully so - they were Great Depression kids after all) was fully exacerbated by this real crisis (which, as we now know, was just the first shot of many across the bow in our dependence on fossil fuel).
Locally, the flip side of the Gas Crisis was the building of ‘New 421’ through the heart of Chatham. That highway construction project, itself designed to bring relief from the often winding shoulderless two-lane ‘Old 421’ that ran from #Goldston through #BearCreek and #Bonlee to #SilerCity and on to #Greensboro, briefly resulted in some very fine straight-ahead, ‘officially’ unoccupied dragways before its opening to traffic in the late ‘70s. Plenty of young, local racers bit the bullet of shortages and rising prices to ‘Go Fast’ during those times. We lost some young people on those curvy old roads and plenty more survived close call crashes. I wrecked a car, my brother did too. Maybe ‘New 421’ saved a life or two. Just the same as I think back it seems a miracle that more didn’t die. The “Hey Y’all! Watch This!” worldview was strong in those times. I wonder how powerful that memory rings today?
I don’t know if racing is still a thing among the boys of #DeepChatham - I’m pretty sure that hunting, fishing, church, and choosing Carolina or State (sadly now-a-days dook is a legitimate choice as well despite the fact that few actual North Carolinians and even fewer #Chathamites attend or have EVER attended that institution since their mid-20th century turn toward enrolling primarily out-of-state) are still important to folks. Perhaps the country crossroads gas station parking lot gang gathering has gone the way of disco and dinosaurs? NASCAR itself has receded from the halcyon days of Petty and Earnhardt - is there even a race still held in North Carolina? And this leads to our #OnThisDay…
#OTD (September 18) in 1947 NASCAR founder Bill France and partners incorporated Hillsboro Speedway. The 1-mile oval seating 25K was known as The Occoneechee Speedway until ‘68. The 10-mile NASCAR opener on June 1, 1948 brought in 20K fans. Occonneechee Speedway, NASCAR in Orange County
